Subject: [bug#55231] [PATCH v1] initrd: Allow extra search paths with ‘initrd-extra-module-paths’

From: Kaelyn <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 May 2022 20:14:25 +0000

As the earlier patch discussion seemed to have focused on ZFS licensing issues that are largely orothogonal to the functionality being added, I'd like to again voice my support for the proposed patch. While ZFS is indeed a bad example due to open questions about module licensing and redistribution, it isn't the only out-of-tree module currently packaged in Guix which could be used with the extra initrd support (not counting future packages or external channels). Within the guix repo, the packages using the `linux-module-build-system` aside from zfs are:
- acpi-call-linux-module
- bbswitch-module
- ddcci-driver-linux
- rtl8812au-aircrack-ng-linux-module
- rtl8821ce-linux-module
- ttyebus-linux-module
- v4l2loopback-linux-module
- vhba-module
- wiregard-linux-compat

Of those nine, at least four look to be for specific hardware, and I can come up with theoretical use cases for why someone might want those or wiregard-linux-compat (though the cases are definitely contrived straw-men that may or may not be implementable in practice or actually useful in an initrd context, such as network booting with an older kernel and the root filesystem can only be accessed over a wireguard connection).

Cheers,
Kaelyn